KCCA this week rounded up some street children from the streets of Kampala and took them to Karamoja for possible rehabilitation. Up to 259 children were rounded up and relocated back to Karamoja. This is not the first time city authorities are carrying out swoops aimed at clearing the city if street kids. There are approximately 15000 Children on the streets of Kampala and the number keeps growing. The economic situation in the country seems to have exercebated the situation. The country is experiencing poor economic performance lately. Though the poor economic performance cannot be solely blamed for the big numbers of street children, it certainly contributes a lot towards the escalation of the already worsening situation.
Many people are desperate and are looking for survival mechanisms and getting on the streets to beg for money is one such easy alternative for the young people. Most children seem to come from one region of the country namely Karamoja and surrounding areas when their families fail to provide for them. It’s not yet clear how these children arrive all the way from distant areas into the city since majority of them do not appear capable of travelling by themselves let alone having transport money. Unconfirmed reports indicate that most of them are brought into the city by shrewd people who who have turned this into a business. The children are required to share proceeds they make from the street with their ‘bosses” everyday. The sources further intimate that this has of late become a very lucrative business as the numbers keep swelling.
The street children are strategic as they stand at places where traffic is held up such as road junctions, traffic lights and other places where cars move slowly. They knock on the doors of the cars requesting for ‘something’ to eat. Good Samaritan’s normally respond by providing some coins and other small amounts of money as a way of sympathy. Information is not yet available on how much an average street child makes in a day. However it is likely that they make a living since most of them keep coming back. If this “business” wasn’t lucrative, possibly majority of them would have abandoned the trade long time ago. The fact that they keep coming back and majority have stayed on the streets for years means that the pull factors are more favorable.
In 2019 KCCA passed an ordinance which outlawed the public from giving money to street children. The reasoning was that when motorists give such children money it acts as an incentive to keep them on the streets. The city authority was of the view that when the children don’t receive any handouts for long, they will soon vacate and relocate back to where they came from. According to the law, when one is convicted of giving money or other material to street children, they are supposed to pay 40,000 or be imprisoned for six months or both. This law however has proved quite ineffective and motorists continue to give the children money which explains the surging numbers. The law in itself was very difficult to enforce and thus remained on paper. To-date, there hasn’t been anyone convicted under this obnoxious law. The latest action by KCCA to relocate the children may not solve the problem at all because it is dealing with the symptom rather than the cause. Until the economic situation of the country improves, we are likely to continue seeing hordes of children on the streets for very many years to come.